Research Summaries

Back Mapping Civil Society to Identify Influencers

Fiscal Year 2015
Division Graduate School of Operational & Information Sciences
Department Defense Analysis
Investigator(s) Lee, Doowan
Everton, Sean F.
Sponsor Special Operations Command Central (Joint)
Summary This work revolves around mapping and identifying key social and political influencers in SOCCENT’s areas of responsibility to assist the command’s preparedness for low intensity conflicts.
More specifically, the sub-tasks are as follows:
1. Provide an assessment of what constitutes social and political influence from a social network perspective. This involves examining different combinations of structural and cultural traits.
2. Provide an open-source analysis of civil society networks in Lebanon, Syria/Iraq, Egypt, and Iraqi Kurdistan and identify ten to fifteen personalities that would be opposed to USG’s goals in the region.
3. Conduct an open-source analysis on civil society networks across the Middle East to identify fifteen-twenty key Kurdish influencers, Druze, Allawites, Christians (Armenian, Orthodox) that have/show the ability to engage other key influential groups in the region.
4. Provide an analysis of social media exploitation to map key themes and frames in insurgent and dissident narratives in Lebanon, Syria/Iraq, Egypt, and Iraqi Kurdistan.
Keywords
Publications Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal